The Teranet-National Bank Housing Index is an independent rating system that measures Canadian single-family homes, the amount of sales, and the prices listed on those homes. The index tries to paint a coast-to-coast picture of the country’s home prices, as it covers Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Quebec City, and Halifax. And this week, they posted their results showing that for the fifth month in a row, the Canadian housing market has cooled.
In January’s recorded result, the Teranet-National Bank index showed that in January 2013 the index sat at 153. That’s an increase of 2.7 per cent from January 2012, but it’s also the lowest 12-month growth rate since November of 2009. It also marked the 14th month in a row that saw smaller price increases when compared year over year, with the index being down o.3 per cent when compared with December 2012.
Vancouver, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the only city on the index this year to show a decline, with a 2.5 per cent drop from January 2012. However, there were several cities on the index that showed declines when compared month-to-month. Those were Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Toronto and Montreal might be especially concerned about these decreases as they were the third and fourth months to show declines, respectively.
The only four markets remaining were those that saw increases and they include Halifax, Ottawa-Gatineau, Quebec, and Victoria.
The report is no doubt going to add fuel to the fire for those bears that are expecting a 10-25 per cent decline in our housing market across the country. And, if multi-family homes such as condos were to be added to that index, the index may be even worse, as this is the sector that’s being hit the hardest in today’s cooling market.
Fortunately, those sharp declines have been scaled back a bit and now we may be expecting a drop of somewhere around just 5 per cent – giving the index hope for future reports!
